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“Made it up”, my ASTERISKS!….

In this comic strip, you get 382 percent more asterisks than in Doonesbury*. Mallard Fillmore has more asterisks than an MLB record-book. Why? So you can check out the sources of the outrageous assertions and iconoclastic animadversions I put in my little comic strip. Because I try to give you the scoop that the mainstream media don’t. Lots of readers find my valuable information so incredible, that they think it must BE incredible.Hence the *s.

My favorite kind of emails are the ones that start out, “I didn’t believe you, but I checked it out”, and end with “why wasn’t THAT on the news?”

This happens, for instance, every time I mention the fact that the vaunted “Head Start” program is really terrific, except for that it, well…. doesn’t work**

(These two recent “Head Start” Mallard strips, which each contain asterisks of their own, AND a link to a newspaper’s investigation of the veracity of Mallard’s Head-Start heresy).

Of course, there are always some folks who’s rather email me to tell me I’m lying, than follow the Asterisk of Truth. (That’s going to happen again this week, when I blow the lid off of the readily available, but rarely reported, fact that TWICE as many public school teachers put their kids in private school as parents who aren’t public school teachers do, so stay tuned, and, as usual, thanks, Walter Williams.)
Bruce

*I actually DID make this up; the actual figure is probably much higher…

**Here are the asterisky Head Start strips, and the link to the Austin American Statesman’s investigation: http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2013/feb/26/mallard-fillmore

25 thoughts on ““Made it up”, my ASTERISKS!….”

I first read that Head Start doesn’t really work in 1969. Some pundit (for obvious reasons, I no longer remember who) pointed out that Nixon had endorsed Head Start while opposing the Job Corps, but that in reality the former didn’t work and the latter actually did (though it was very costly).

I tried to follow your “(Double-)Asterisk of Truth” at the bottom of the post, but it leads to a page that does not exist. I’m going to have to find some shelter from all these knowledge-nuggets you’re dropping.

I just saw your Nov. 3, 2013 feature, once again stereotyping the average government worker as a bald, fat, middle-aged waste of space scarfing cheese puffs on the couch. To be clear, employees declared “non-essential” during Senator Cruz’s temper tantrum called the government shutdown were not all spoiled, useless paper-pushers. Cruz, himself, along with the rest of the Tea Party core of anarchist nuts, made a point of appearing on TV to lament the furlough of “non-essential” government employees, including oncologists running cancer trials for the NIH, FDA food inspectors and national park rangers. Where does your intense hatred of federal employees stem from? Did you decide all federal workers were dead to you after being denied a federal job when you were younger? Obviously, something set you off; this type of intense, pathological hatred of a diverse group of people is more than just toeing the Tea Party line.

I am a contractor for the DOD. As far as Government workers go, this strip is too easy on them. Let me give you a word advice, you could easily get rid of 90 percent of contractors tomorrow if Government workers would just do their jobs. As an example, the NSA used to have a no contractors policy, they were dragged into hiring contractors by necessity, but for my money I would hope they would go back to that policy, that is one agency that I hope one day runs with the efficiency of Government workers.

I always read Mallard Fillmore, because I am still waiting for Mr. Tinsley to make a valid and honest comment. The cartoons about the press giving the President a pass is pure baloney. After the (admitted) fiasco of the rollout of the Affordable Care Act, the coverage was wall to wall for two weeks, until I stopped watching the news for a while. One would have thought that a crime had been committed, such as, for example, sending Americans to war on trumped-up claims of WMD, or shutting down the government and costing the economy billions, or threatening to not raise the debt ceiling. What not write about that, Mr. Tinsley? Still waiting.

The stat about public school teachers goes back to the early 80s. My brother-in-law was a public school teacher and decided to homeschool his children. We were all surprised that public school teachers pull their children out of the public school at a higher rate than any other professionals. I don’t know if it was twice as many back then as now, but I would not be at all surprised. I teach, and guess what? All four of my children were homeschooled.

Thank you for the Thank You to all veterans. I do wonder why as you are apparently of my generation you didn’t serve. I am your opposite – my grandfather was rejected for WW I (they said he had TB) and my father turned down for WW II (double hernia), however I did serve in Vietnam and other family members had served in every American war from the Civil War on. Could it be you are like Mr. Cheney who when he was eligible for the draft “had other priorities” (he took how many exemptions was it 5 or 7, I lost count?). However once he was safe he along with Wolfowitz, Libby, Bolton and the rest of the neo-cons, who also didn’t feel the need to serve, were more than happy to find any excuse to send other into harm’s way. Think they are called chicken hawks. The most pacifistic groups are combat vets because they know just how bad war is – too bad today’s leaders (and cartoonist and talking heads) never had that “education”.

Its such as you read my thoughts! You seem to know a lot approximately this, such as you wrote the book in it or something.
I feel that you just can do with some p.c. to power the message house a bit,
however instead of that, this is fantastic blog. An excellent read.
I’ll definitely be back.

Write more, thats all I have to say. Literally, it seems aas though
you relied on the video to make your point. You obviously
know what youre talking about, why waste your intelligence on just posting
videos to your blog when you could be giving us something informative to read?

Bruce Tinsley:
I don’t suppose you will even bother reading this (if you can read) since I am a public school teacher. You obviously have nothing but contempt for all teachers. Your strip is not funny, not creative and definitely not amusing. It is mean-spirited, snotty, and made up of out-right fabrications (is that too big a word for you?) Your so-called ‘Comic Strip’ is rude and offensive to me and other teachers. I graduated Summa Cum Laude from my university. I spend countless unpaid hours in my classroom making sure I am doing the very best for my students. I work very hard teaching students what they need to know to prepare them for their future. In my eighteen-plus years of teaching, I have never met any teachers like those you caricature in your strip.
I can’t believe you get paid to ridicule and insult people who are dedicated to making the world a better place. There is nothing in your strip that is going to improve anyone’s life. Why don’t you ridicule drug dealers? Why not poke fun at murderers? Why not ridicule our government’s lawmakers’ pathetic excuses for polluting our planet? Why don’t you insult those people who go out of their way to make the world a stupider, meaner, uglier place? Oh, I forgot, I guess you can’t make fun of yourself.
You and Rush Limbaugh must be the best of buddies. You both are smug, ignorant, hypocritical, insulting, and rude. Neither of you do anything but try to bully those people who don’t think like you.
Next, I suppose you’ll start demeaning nurses, or crippled people, or nuns, or the mentally ill, or the mentally handicapped. Those groups would make good targets for you. Why don’t you just come out and blame teachers for all the world’s ills? Then you can start putting them in camps to torture and punish them for their crime. Too bad for you, Adolph Hitler already beat you to that one! That must have been a real disappointment. Think of all the funny comic strips you could have done with that idea! (Your diatribes are every bit as wrong, mean, and crazy as concentration camps, and also about as funny!)
Why don’t you come into my classroom, and see what I and countless other educators do every day, year after year? I guess that would be too hard, and you wouldn’t have the guts to admit you are wrong. I think you need a different job. You would do very well at cleaning out toilets, since that is about the level of your humor.
You ought to be ashamed of yourself.
Mary Caddell
Educator (and proud of it!)

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